The Magic of a Puppy

Tumultuous would be the best description of life in our pack these days. With worries about R and some other out of the ordinary things, I feel as if I am off-kilter.

But then some friends invited me to drop by and meet their puppy. She's still tiny - barely as big as a person's shoe. She's a yellow Lab within her first couple of months of life.

She has already learned that she loves chewing sticks. I wonder if she's been talking to R. He chews nothing besides sticks... so sticks must have cracked the two teeth that he had pulled last week.

All that chewing has not affected her puppy breath! I love puppy breath! It's like a magical elixir that cures all that ails you.

Every time I see a puppy like this one, I want to get one of our own. I've often thought that perhaps our next puppy will be a yellow Lab. This little yellow Lab even has cute eye lashes! She didn't help me to keep up my defenses about getting a puppy.

Alas, when I snap back to reality, we have many good reasons not to get a puppy right now. Two good reasons are R and Shyla, both of whom need our attention.

I was really floundering with regard to R when we were first hit with the unexpected news of his tumors. I found that adrenal gland tumors are rare so I couldn't find a lot of good information about them on the web. That didn't stop me from trying - and I went around and around googling different combinations of words - until my head was spinning hopelessly. I felt so lost and so sad.

Then, the next morning, I decided to play with R rather than google dog cancers. We did his crawling under a line of 10 chairs and then reverse crawling back to his original position. He LOVES that game, and barks with joy between repetitions. It's actually a rehab exercise but you'd never know it based on how ecstatic R is about doing it. I made a little video of him and me playing the other day.

He does it with as much excitement as when he leaps into a mountain lake!

The truth is that R simply loves life. As we played, I realized that he's okay right now. He appears perfectly healthy so I should enjoy these days with him, without letting clouds on the horizon darken my mood too much to have fun with him. This is a lesson that dogs teach us over and over and over again.

Angel K taught me that lesson, and I will try very hard not to forget it again.

Dogs see the brilliant rainbows and ignore the clouds. Aren't they amazing creatures?